Fairfax Media on the hunt for elusive sales ‘unicorn’ who can create as well as sell content
Armstrong speaking at today’s Future Forum event
Fairfax Media’s sales boss Tom Armstrong has said the company is on the hunt for a “unicorn”, a sales person who is able to produce content and sell it to a client.
Commercial director Tom Armstrong told delegates at this afternoon’s newspaper industry Future Forum advertising & marketing masterclass that the media business is being disrupted and that this was driving new waves of innovation.
“One of the things we are seeing is marketers moving into the owned and earned media space, they want to create content and they want to own content,” said Armstrong.
“At Fairfax we create content every day.”
On how this will shape media sales teams in the future, Armstrong explained Fairfax has an internal content agency which aims to have staff who are half producer-creative type people and half-salespeople.
“We are looking for people who can stand in front of a client, ideate, come up with creative concepts, produce stuff and also ask for money,” he said.
“They are hard skills to find,” he added, describing them as an elusive “unicorn”.
Armstrong’s comments come only three months after Fairfax Media withdrew a job ad for a “sales representative & journalist” in its local paper division claiming it had posted the position, as a “combined role”, mistakenly.
The sales boss also said Fairfax is trying to develop these skills in-house but it is difficult to find people who can produce content and then sell to clients as well.
“There are a lot of people in the business who have the creative production skills but when you ask someone who works in editorial or production services to stand in front of a client they don’t have a thick enough skin to take the criticism and they don’t like asking for the money,” he said.
Miranda Ward
Miranda Ward worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017, eventually becoming deputy editor. Miranda joined Mumbrella in September 2013 from Sky News.
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They’re called creative directors. You need to pay them top $ not Fairfax peanuts.
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Spot-on, Creative.
The talent to create desirable content AND the business savvy to sell it, is Creative Director territory, and because it’s a revenue generator, attracts top money.
It’s not journos, it’s not salespeople – it’s Senior CDs.
Any peanuts under $170-180K, they’ll get monkeys, and fail.
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To Fairfax, You had these unicorns and ‘restructured’ them out of the business, congrat-u-f^&%$ing-lations. This is evidence that redundancy programs aren’t remotely connected to any concept of keeping talent
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Ironically, it was the rigid ‘church and state’ divide that caused much of the pain Fairfax feels now.
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Journo cum ad sales? You may as well cut the middle man and just let brands and agencies pay you to write your newspaper.
I’m on the wrong side of the fence to be saying this but this sounds like the death of journalistic integrity.
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I imagine that the average Fairfax worker is hoping for a senior management team who has a strategy other than looking for unicorns.
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Does anybody remember Charlie the Unicorn? Familiar story.
Fairfax has been talking about getting into the content business since 2013 “Fairfax boss Greg Hywood: We’re going to get into the content marketing business” mumbrella, Nov 7, 2013.
http:// .com.au/fairfax-boss-greg-hywood-going-get-content-marketing-business-188456#comments
What happened to events, SME (small and medium sized enterprises) digital and marketing services; and data?
Unfortunately for Fairfax, many of these “unicorns” are former staff members who now work at Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo or wherever else the grass is greener. In these magical new workplaces they are not expected to be mythical creatures with large horns projecting from their foreheads to help fend off the mergers, redundancies or sale whilst trying to create, sell and deliver engaging content that is independent always.
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Fairfux management being the troglodytes that they are, if they DID find a unicorn in their depleted staff ranks, the first thing they would do is de-horn it.
Unicorns wouldn’t fit with their hacks-only policy.
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two things missing in Fairfax – Unicorns and Hope!
I think they are also seeking a Gruffalo to manage its commercial revenue..
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If not already, can please all and sundry add ‘unicorn’ next to guru, maven, digital prophet, hyper connected.
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@Mike – You have to be dreaming or one of these so called Creative Directors to think they are worth nearly 5 times the average Joe’s wage
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Fairfax got rid of those people – publishers. They were from an editorial background but they had commercial nous and worked closely with sales teams. More fool them.
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Tim, I am doing exactly this for Fairfax – with my radio show ‘What’s cooking’ on NTS.
Nerida 🙂
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